I don't know why I never checked on this during the campaign, but I had a thought last night, and, damnit, one of my favorite Sam Cooke songs was hijacked by the O-bots. In hindsight, it was pretty obvious that they'd do so...

The money came from a Citibank account in New York held by the National Bank of Ethiopia, that country’s central bank. Prosecutors said the conspirators, contacted by Citibank to verify the transactions, posed as Ethiopian bank officials and approved the transfers.Mr. Amos was arrested last month as he tried to enter the United States through Los Angeles, a prosecutor, Marcus A. Asner, said in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

Mr. Amos, who was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, told a federal magistrate judge, “I’m not guilty, sir.” The judge, Andrew J. Peck, ordered him detained pending a further hearing. If convicted, he could face up to 30 years in prison, prosecutors said.The fraud was uncovered after several banks where the conspirators held accounts returned money to Citibank, saying they had been unable to process the transactions, and an official of the National Bank of Ethiopia said that it did not recognize the transactions, according to a complaint signed by an F.B.I. agent, Bryan Trebelhorn.

A Citigroup spokeswoman said: “We have worked closely with law enforcement throughout the investigation and are pleased it has resulted in this arrest. Citi constantly reviews and upgrades its physical, electronic and procedural safeguards to detect, prevent and mitigate theft.”

At least two task force members don't own a car, and there are still two open slots on the 10-member panel that will be filled by the secretaries of labor and commerce, who have not yet been appointed.

The co-chairs of the task force -- Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and White House National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers -- both own foreign automobiles.

Geithner owns a 2008 Acura TSX, registered in New York. He once owned a 1999 Honda Accord and a 2002 Acura MDX, according to public records.

Geithner is the president's designee for purposes of enforcing loan agreements with GM and Chrysler and must approve or reject any proposed transactions by either company that would cost $100 million or more.

His maternal grandfather, Charles Moore, was a vice president at Ford Motor Co. from 1952-63, according to Peter Geithner, the secretary's father. But Geithner wasn't very interested in cars growing up -- in part because he graduated from high school in Asia, his father said.

• Carol Browner, the White House climate czar, said earlier this month at the Washington Auto Show that she doesn't own an automobile. Public records show she once owned a 1999 Saab 9-5 SE.

• Energy Secretary Steven Chu doesn't own a car, his wife, Jean Fetter, said in a telephone interview on Sunday. Cabinet officials are typically transported to and from work by security officials in government vehicles.

• Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson owns a 2008 Toyota Prius and a Honda Odyssey minivan, she said Sunday. "It's great," she said of her Prius.

• Vehicle information was not available for Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood or Christine Romer, head of the Council of Economic Advisers.

February 20, 2009

Here is where I recycle my old "if the Republicans had sone this..." line.

Stacie Paxton, a spokeswoman for the Obama-controlled DNC, explained the reimbursement delay by saying, "We are still looking at various costs and bills.'' She would not say whether parts of the bill are disputed.

The city spent $1 million on police protection for the rally. The Office of Emergency Management and Communications racked up more than $120,000 in expenses, including $19,500 paid to police official Neil Sullivan to quarterback election night logistics.

In late October, Mayor Daley assured that the cash-flush Obama campaign would reimburse the city for every penny spent on the rally. "We have a financial crisis," he said at the time. "The City of Chicago could not afford $2 million on this because we're gonna be laying off people, cutting back. That [cost] would really be unfortunate. . . . It's a huge cost to the City of Chicago.

"This is not a presidential visit. . . . This is a political event, and they've agreed to pay for all those services -- all the expenses of that. ... It's costly, but they raised quite a bit of money. There's no [shortage] of money in that campaign."

The day after the Nov. 4 election, Daley was asked again whether the Obama campaign would pay up.

"Yeah. I don't know why you're so negative. ... What is this? He just won for president, and you say, 'He's not gonna pay his bills,' " the mayor said then.

On Dec. 9, the day the Sun-Times disclosed the $1.74 million tab, Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt referred questions to the DNC.

February 18, 2009

Consider: Emanuel served on the Freddie Mac board of directors
during the time that the government-backed lender lied about its
earnings, a leading contributor to the current economic meltdown.

The Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight Agency later singled out
the Freddie Mac board as contributing to the fraud in 2000 and 2001 for
"failing in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention."
In other words, board members ignored the red flags waving in their
faces.

The SEC later fined Freddie $50 million for its deliberate fraud in 2000, 2001 and 2002.

Meanwhile, Emanuel was paid more than $260,000 for his Freddie
"service." Plus, after he resigned from the board to run for Congress
in 2002, the troubled agency's PAC gave his campaign $25,000 - its
largest single gift to a House candidate.

In a slap at her predecessors, Clinton made it clear she believes that the Bush administration's decision to walk away from an agreement negotiated during her husband's administration -- the 1994 Agreed Framework -- helped create the current crisis over North Korea's stash of nuclear weapons.

"The Agreed Framework was torn up on the basis of the concerns about the highly-enriched-uranium program," Clinton said. "There is no debate that, once the Agreed Framework was torn up, the North Koreans began to reprocess plutonium with a vengeance because all bets were off. The result is they now have nuclear weapons, which they did not have before."

And there was no debate whatsoever over the fact that "The Agreed Framework" was based on a thin tissue of lies that your husband wanted to hear in order to believe that he'd found a solution to an international problem rather than placing a Band-Aid on it? Right?

The Funniest End of Civilization EVAR is going to be a lot funnier from somewhere far from the West Coast, right? Okay, then, I'll be moving to Nebraska.

February 09, 2009

“I dreamed I was an Obama girl. I had a chance to be in the same room with him for the first time. There were dark velvet chairs and he was standing there with all this dark and mist around him. His lips so purple and sensuous as if to be otherworldly,” she wrote to me. “I moved gently toward him and then I said the wrong thing. Obama tamped it down like some vapor that didn’t register. He wasn’t even flattered.”

February 08, 2009

After
Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at
some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would
rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory
Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical
transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all
presidents tell -- and that this president told better than anyone.

I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anything in the Constitution about "do-overs." Damnit.

February 05, 2009

Sylvia Keys, a calligrapher
who’s lived in a condo there for 18 years, recently posted to the U
Street Listserv that she finally scored an alley parking spot and,
guess what? There are rats in the alley. And guess what else? They are
“living, eating and partying on our motors. And leaving ‘debris’
behind,” Keys writes.

And
that’s not all: “My taillight went out and the dealer said that rats
had been chewing away the wires, thus costing me $200. And yes, the
dealership did find a dead rat baby around my motor.”

There’s
no way she’s giving up her spot in “a very nice, newly bricked,
alleyway” to battle the masses on 15th Street again. So she turned to
the Listserv for help. The Listserv directed her to D.C. vermin czar Gerard Brown, who has a lot on his to-do list, including, as our almost-old cover story points out, bedbugs.